Wednesday 14 May 2014

Israel: Part 3

The rest of the trip we focussed our birding around the Yotvata and KM20 areas, and picked up plenty of good birds, and a noticeable increase of migrants:
Pied Kingfisher-KM19-20 ditch

Black Bush Robin
 Undoubtedly my best find of the trip was this Black Bush robin, initially found early morning at the Arabian warbler site near Yotvata where a few people got on to it.
Hoopoe, Yotvata

Issy wheatear

Ortolan

 The Black Bush Robin, or quite possibly another, then popped up 20km further south that afternoon, and again 2km further south 15 minutes later! One birding moving fast, or a bit of an arrival?


Randomly hopping about under some desert scrub

Male Rock Thrush in the middle of desert scrub

Huge flock of Spanish Sparrows were present at Yotvata

Breeding KP at Km20
 Selection of migrants:



I found this Collared fly on birdrace day at IBRC, but it vanished before all but one team got to see it
 And on our way back to Tel Aviv we stopped at the wonderful Lahav, very different to the arid south.
Great Spotted Cuckoo



Long-billed Pipit on territory
 When we arrived at Tel Aviv, we wasted ours pissing about in traffic, but we did get our only White-breasted Kingfishers of the trip before heading home via extremely heavy airport security.


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